76 ON AND OFF THE AVENUE W ORKING way ahead of mere shoppers, as ever, the New York designers have already shown us what they hope to see us weanng in the falL The collections have never before been so numerous, so elaborately presented, or of such gener- ally high quality. Yet, although the best of the new clothes are profoundly satis- fying, they do not set out to be exciting. Clothes that consciously cultivate ex- citement look dated now. They contin- ue to form at least a part of collections at both ends of the fashion spectrum- from the Old Guard, schooled in an earlier tradition of drop-dead glamour, and from those of the younger gen- eration who have not grown out of their years of startlingly anti-establish- ment rebellion. In the grander cate- gory, John Anthony's satin evening gowns that expose bosoms and lengths of thigh; Halston's cruelly revealing chiffons and his skintight satin leotards under open taffeta skirts and saloon- girl boots, which all seem desIgned to prove that ladies are really whores at heart; the steely glitter of a Bill Blass or an Oscar de la Renta, who sums up the ladylike sterility of the Washing- ton-ballroom mode; and Pauline Tri- gère's fox-trimmed opera suits, with their echoes of Walter Winchell at "21 "-all these appear to faU outside the imaginative focus of designers with a proper sense of the fashion that is right for now. And the old symbols of excitement and liberation developed by the younger generation as a challe.nge to their elders also look flat and conventional when- showed selected styles by some design- ers-mostly French-of what is viewed as the younger school. A youngish crowd, keyed up to witness galvanizing new fashion, jammed itself into a styl- ishly renovated midtown bistro to see the show. A pair of mystically robed youths sat on a magic carpet and pro- vided musical accompanIment, some- times by singing in falsetto. The parade of fashions was interrupted at one point while a girl in an Afghan wedding dress and a barefoot young man wearing a green cloak and a ruched gold jump suit performed a trembhnglv cabalistic dance. The fashions included coats wIth designs like playroom murals, a few miniskirts, and gauzy garments of Moroccan or Indian inspiration. All this let us know that we were in the presence of the younger generation, and so did the audience, whose members simply oozed individualism, wit, and "style." They all looked to be around thirty . Somehow, the whole occasion didn't quite make sense. The audience had come to see thrilling young fashion, but its members-with their amusing- ly scavenged clothes, their thigh-high boots, and their hair tied up in berib- boned, clownlike tufts-already repre- sented it better than the clothes they saw modelled now and would be able to buy in shops, at considerable expense, in the falL One costume appeared on the run- way with the model carrYIng a metal toolbox for a handbag. But what lesson abou t the freedom to wear anything that strikes the fancy and the possibili- ty of self-expressIon through humble found objects had that toolbox to teach one not atypical girl in the audi- ence? She had already made her way to Forty-fourth Street wear- ing, on her head, a gold-painted creation that looked like a cross between Aladdin's lamp and the prow of an ancient Egyptian barge The whole experience left one with a feeling of uncertainty and gloom about rebellious fash- ion now that the nineteen-sixties generation has grown up. Is this all that kind of fashion added up to, after all? Was this what those years of quickening pulses were leading to-a group of grownup people, with a code of individual- istic "style" In dress that was not so remarkably different from FE,MININE, FASHIONS THE. FALL COLLE.CTIONS-I ever they crop up these days. Carol Horn's styles, influenced by the Third World, non-tailored tradition of dress, and depending more on wrappIng and draping cloth than on cutting and shap- ing it, no longer evoke our instinctive philosophical sympathy. This designer's passion for versatility within a single garment (hoods transformed them- selves into off-the-shoulder necklines in her show, and diaperlike pantaloons turned first into mini-length then in- to knee-length, and, finally, into calf- length balloons) resulted in a tiresome orgy of unwrapping and rewrapping that no longer seemed particularly valid. Stephen Burrows, for his part, bears the unfortunate burden of having not just his designs but his whole career serve for many as a symbol of Ameri- can new-wave fashion excitement. His career has come full circle now, from a triumphant launching at Bendel's seven years ago, through a painful period of insensitive treatment at the hands of big-business Seventh Avenue, to what has been billed as a triumphant come- back at Bendel's thIs season. But nei- ther the saga of his career vicissitudes nor the standard of his show was quite sufficient to bowl us over anymore- and we had been somehow encour- aged to believe that nothing less than wild enthusiasm would serve. A cou- ple of other "younger generation" shows I saw, which included European designers seeking to launch themselves on the New York market, underscored the curiously i r reI e van t quality of clothes that bear too obvious marks of youth. Cygne Designs and DIanne B. --- .d ------